MEXICO
MEXICO, thanks to the high degree of civilization achieved
by the Aztecs, was a powerfully organized state when the
Spaniards arrived on the scene. Their leader in those
days was Montezuma II who, encouraging his subjects
to pay him divine honours, dissipated the state treasure
and ground down his people by crushing taxation. There
was nothing in him of the romantic hero to whom our
philosophers lent such widespread popularity. When
Fernando Cortez invaded his territory, the Spanish
Conquistador was quick to make capital out of the
jealousies and hatreds which the tyrant had engendered.
Cortez made himself master of Mexico, and Montezuma
was taken prisoner. One day, when he essayed to inter-
pose between the invaders and his subjects in an attempt
to persuade the latter to abandon the conflict, he was
overwhelmed with a shower of arrows and stones, and
perished. The date of his death was 3Oth June, 1520.
So far is he from exciting the veneration of his country-
men, that his memory to-day is reviled by the Mexicans,
who look on him as a traitor. Reputations are as un-
stable as popular opinion.
The hero of the fruitless struggle for independence, the
Mexican Vercingetorix, a gigantic statue of whom adorns
the principal square of Mexico city, then a young man
of twenty-five, was Cuauhtemoc, the Eagle that descended,
who, in Europe, is also known as Guatimozin. Guati-
mozin succeeded in rallying round him as one man all
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